Following the release of its first non-beta Sound Blaster X-Fi drivers for Vista earlier this month, Creative has updated its ALchemy software to support additional games. ALchemy, which Creative introduced back in January, is essentially a wrapper that translates DirectSound API calls into OpenAL calls. Because of Vista's redesigned audio pipeline, the software is necessary for EAX audio acceleration to function in some games running on the new operating system.
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Last edited by OWA; 03-23-07 at 01:34 PM.
Reason: Released on March 15th, so kind of old.

Vista still supports direct sound software mode, which gives you 5.1 if the game supports it.

What you lose is hardware acceleration and any hardware effects like EAX.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Alchemy Site

The audio changes in Windows Vista do not affect OpenAL however. For audio cards that feature 'native' OpenAL support, such as the SB X-Fi series of cards, there is no need to worry! Games that enable support for OpenAL will continue to run just as they do on Windows XP - with hardware accelerated audio and effects.

This has been true till i met Stalker. I have had to 'switch' to the non system openal driver with the UT engines, but Stalker has no such option. Guess i'll have to wait for a patch before i can fully enjoy it.